The Downstream Effects of Sanctioning Russia into the Stone Age

[calfoxwc]

and seed. When we planted soybeans - it cost about a thousand bucks for our bigger field back then...

Expect Higher Seed Corn Prices This Fall | Hoosier Ag Today

https://hoosieragtoday.com › expect-higher-seed-corn-prices-this-fall

The first is that generally during higher expected revenue periods seed corn costs tend to rise. We saw rising revenues in 2020, and expect this to continue into 2021 and this would lead us to believe seed cost will rise in 2022." The ag economist expects seed corn costs to increase by $6 to $10 per acre.

[VaporTrail]

Thanks for sharing, cal. 

[calfoxwc]

2 hours ago, VaporTrail said:

Thanks for sharing, cal. 

Ironically, I just saw a while ago, that fertilizer and seed prices are expected to go up

by triple digit percentages. 

[VaporTrail]

Part III: The Impact on Future Technologies

I've seen a lot of people positing that this conflict will open the floodgates on green tech. I think that it will actually have the opposite effect. Russia is a top 5 exporter of nickel, steel, and aluminum. You need nickel for resistance to corrosion. You need steel for basically everything. You need aluminum to make it strong, but light. Wind turbines, nuclear reactors, EVs - their production is going to be even more cost-prohibitive than it is now. 

Below is an interesting graphic from Peter Zeihan's upcoming book. You can see that you need a lot less metal mass per vehicle or per megawatt generated versus fossil fuel infrastructure. It's not a good time to go green. 

Source: Zeihan on Geopolitics

[Canton Dawg]

Makes me happy that I invested in copper a couple of years ago.

[Axe]

On 3/17/2022 at 1:04 PM, calfoxwc said:

Ironically, I just saw a while ago, that fertilizer and seed prices are expected to go up

by triple digit percentages. 

Well, you know who produces the most shit,, eeerrr, fertilizer

 

[Westside Steve]

Just saw a few articles claiming that Bidenl threatened the Chinese with sanctions should they become involved. No doubt that will hurt the United States consumer more than it will hurt the Chinese. And let me guess that the EU will still buy Russian oil and gas and Chinese products. So the actual pain will be borne by American citizens. Maybe Biden supporters should go on a hunger strike until Putin surrenders?

WSS

[BaconHound]

On 3/15/2022 at 11:59 AM, MLD Woody said:

@VaporTrail what are your thoughts on the thousands of previously approved drilling permits that the oil companies aren't using?

 

Not to get all socialist here, but maybe something as critical to our economy, and the world's, should be entirely left up to CEOs looking to get the most benefit for their shareholders.

Not to mention the Keystone Pipeline exists and is operational.  Phases 1-3 are going it was Phase 4, Keystone XL, that was cancelled.  Phases 1-3 have the capacity to transport 1.3 million barrels per day.

[Westside Steve]

If the EU and NATO continue to buy Russian oil and the price of a barrel doubles who is suffering, the Russians or the people that buy the oil?

Seems like a case of "this is going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you!"

Just wait till we get the bill for the sanctions against China.

WSS

[MLD Woody]

@VaporTrail

My other thought on this topic, in regards to the sources of these metals, is where the current production is compared to where the reserves of these metals are located. It could all be getting mined already and this is a moot point, I don't know. But I am wondering if this is a similar situation to oil and natural gas, where there are more locations where these resources can be extracted, but for various reasons, the companies that do the extraction have deemed those locations not financially viable. Are the more domestic, non-Russian sources of nickel that could be tapped to aid in the production of these modern technologies, but mining companies feel that it is too costly (location, regulations, labor, etc.)? If that is the case, then you either wait for the "free" market to come around and make those mines economically viable (price increases / supply shortages out of Russia) or you direct funding from the govt. to subsidize these efforts and kickstart the process (maybe just but two fewer fighter jets in the defense budget or something...)

[Vambo]

4 minutes ago, MLD Woody said:

@VaporTrail

My other thought on this topic, in regards to the sources of these metals, is where the current production is compared to where the reserves of these metals are located. It could all be getting mined already and this is a moot point, I don't know. But I am wondering if this is a similar situation to oil and natural gas, where there are more locations where these resources can be extracted, but for various reasons, the companies that do the extraction have deemed those locations not financially viable. Are the more domestic, non-Russian sources of nickel that could be tapped to aid in the production of these modern technologies, but mining companies feel that it is too costly (location, regulations, labor, etc.)? If that is the case, then you either wait for the "free" market to come around and make those mines economically viable (price increases / supply shortages out of Russia) or you direct funding from the govt. to subsidize these efforts and kickstart the process (maybe just but two fewer fighter jets in the defense budget or something...)

Markets

Dow skids 449 points while oil hits $114,

[VaporTrail]

On 3/24/2022 at 12:38 AM, MLD Woody said:

@VaporTrail

My other thought on this topic, in regards to the sources of these metals, is where the current production is compared to where the reserves of these metals are located. It could all be getting mined already and this is a moot point, I don't know. But I am wondering if this is a similar situation to oil and natural gas, where there are more locations where these resources can be extracted, but for various reasons, the companies that do the extraction have deemed those locations not financially viable. Are the more domestic, non-Russian sources of nickel that could be tapped to aid in the production of these modern technologies, but mining companies feel that it is too costly (location, regulations, labor, etc.)? If that is the case, then you either wait for the "free" market to come around and make those mines economically viable (price increases / supply shortages out of Russia) or you direct funding from the govt. to subsidize these efforts and kickstart the process (maybe just but two fewer fighter jets in the defense budget or something...)

I'm all for decreasing US defense spending, but you can't just move it from the DOD budget to the DOE budget and expect that to fix the issue. The people with the highest expertise in these fields are in the private sector. So if the government were to say "Hey, we want to add infrastructure for mining raw metal" you can bet that they'd be contracting out a significant portion of that work - and in my estimation the contractors (oil super majors, large mining companies) would still be running the show. Everything that you're suggesting is happening as we speak, but it's going to be on the order of years, in my opinion before these things can really get running. 

In the case of natural gas, however, Russia owns a product that is inelastic. The image below shows a lot of the end products in petroleum/shale/gas refinement. Source: Zeihan. The biggest story that will dictate the geopolitics of Europe is the G7 commitment to NOT cede to Putin's demand to only accept Rubles for payment for their gas/oil products. Russia's next step may be to shut off the gas. This will squeeze the Europeans, and Russia will be paying close attention to the Germans. If they get squeezed hard enough, then Putin could have the upper hand in negotiations and demand that Germany withdraw from NATO defense commitments. They'll do the same to Turkey, who they also share a pipeline with. If those two countries cave, then every NATO member will be second guessing what this alliance actually means. This is Putin's long game. All of this is going to happen long before the replacement infrastructure is in place.  

 

[DieHardBrownsFan]

3 minutes ago, VaporTrail said:

I'm all for decreasing US defense spending

Sure, let's decrease while Russia and China are in cahoots.  Let's spend it on welfare and green energy instead.

[VaporTrail]

13 hours ago, DieHardBrownsFan said:

Sure, let's decrease while Russia and China are in cahoots.  Let's spend it on welfare and green energy instead.

Why don't we do that with social security instead 😉

[DieHardBrownsFan]

1 hour ago, VaporTrail said:

Why don't we do that with social security instead 😉

I agree.  For anyone retiring after 2050.😁

[VaporTrail]

Let's talk about the Horn of Africa. 

About 150 million people live in the area consisting of Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Somalia. These folks haven't exactly been dealt a good hand, and life over there is about to get significantly harder. 

 

Looking at the map, you can see that the western areas of the horn are forested, and as you go further north into Sudan and Egypt, it turns to desert. This region is a powder keg of water and food conflicts, and they're about to get triply squeezed.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
The Nile River is the largest source of freshwater for much of the region and beyond, and you can see it dividing Egypt and flowing through Sudan. One of the major tributaries that feeds the Nile is the Blue Nile. This river runs through the greenest part of Ethiopia and flows into Sudan. Ethiopia has started a major engineering project called the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. 

This dam was built on the Blue Nile. It will affect the 13 countries in the Nile River basin and the 300 million people living there. Damming this river has been a contentious issue for Egypt and Ethiopia for about 100 years. In July of last year, the Ethiopians said to hell with what the Egyptians and Sudanese want, and they started filling it. It is expected to take 4-6 years until the filling is complete. 90% of Egypt's water supply comes from the Nile. 30% of the country's working population is in Nile-based agriculture. The looming water crisis is an existential threat to both countries, and diplomatic compromises have been scarce. 

The Ukranian Conflict
I've talked at length about how most of the surplus grain from Ukraine and Russia goes to Africa. 80% of Egypt's wheat imports came from the two countries. They've secured some exports from India to make up for the supply disruption. 60% of Sudan's imported wheat was from Russia and Ukraine. In Ethiopia, 45% of their imported wheat is from Russia and Ukraine. These countries aren't particularly wealthy to begin with, and here is what has happened to the price of wheat over the last 5 years. 

Historic Drought
The Horn is currently experiencing the worst drought in about 40 years. When a similar drought hit Ethiopia in the 80s, approximately 1 million people died. The UN has called for donations, and the world community has pledged $1.4 billion dollars. 

So, what does this have to do with anything? 

There will be refugees. Some will flee to Kenya. The Middle Eastern countries might take a small number. Turkey has historically taken a bunch from Syria/Iraq, but the conflict in Syria would be a barrier for refugees. I would bet that many of them try to take a trip across the Mediterranean where Europe is already struggling to take in refugees from Ukraine. Look at the response to current riots in Sweden over some troll burning a Koran, for example. More Europeans are starting to question if taking in massive amounts of refugees from a different culture is worth the clashes that follow. Even in France, where Macron just won his election, the nationalist party candidate Marine Le Pen increased her vote share by 10% compared to the election in 2017. 

As of last year, analysts suggested that proxy conflicts over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam were likely. An open war between Egypt and Ethiopia was considered to be highly unlikely. Now that the region is dealing with all 3 of these issues at the same time, the probability of an open war increases. If this were to happen, Egypt would likely target the dam. Ethiopia would target the Suez Canal. Remember how big a deal it was when the Evergreen container ship got stuck there for a week? Remember all the delays that caused? This would be considerably worse, as container ships and barges would be avoiding the area completely instead of waiting nearby for it to reopen. This is a major shipping route for LNG and oil from the Middle East to Europe, who already lacks the resolve to stop buying Russian fossil fuels and is funding the Ukrainian invasion. It's also the most direct route for getting Russian oil to China.

Obviously, I can't predict the future, but I am certainly starting to get concerned about things snowballing. On the one hand, you have Russian aggression galvanizing the rest of Europe into sanctioning them into the stone age. On the other, these sanctions are about to amplify the European refugee and energy crises. It will be interesting to see how it plays out, but when you have people like Boris Johnson shouting that the sanctions will continue even if Russia ceases hostilities, it doesn't really give Putin a reason to stop. 

 

[calfoxwc]

Just now, calfoxwc said:

it is a point that if russia DID stop because of sanctions, they will simply start again when they "catch up" with their finances.

   There are rumors of pukin's health starting to show signs of weakness - he may be nuke all in to own Europe again.

All this genocide would NOT HAVE HAPPENED if certain ignorant emotional knee jerks didn't vote against their own country.

right after the election, russia went for it.

they have been planning for a long time - stealing American high tech for years. NOTE:

obaMao years, and now biden years. And still, my concern, long range, is that russia is destroying the Ukraine and committing genocide, because they want to launch their wwiii from the Ukraine location, keeping the fight from moscow etc. It's going to get worse. The world seems to be making the same mistakes they did before WWII.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/special-report-how-military-technology-reaches-russia-in-breach-of-u-s-export-controls/ar-AAWJTdy

 

 

[VaporTrail]

Two months out of my last post, let's see where things stand now. 

Economics - NATOsphere has maintained sanctions on Russia. However, they appear to have overestimated the effect it would have on the Russian economy and underestimated the effect it would have on their own. The commodities that the West is refusing to buy from Russia are now being sold to the renewed BRICS coalition and it's keeping the Russian economy afloat. In my opinion, the decision to enact these sanctions is as big of a blunder as Russia assuming that the Ukrainians would welcome their military with open arms. 

Keep in mind these are Russian sourced data, but they are running a bigger surplus than they did pre-war (because they're cut off from a lot of their spending on western goods). Oil industry brokers are on record as saying these sanctions haven't worked and Russian revenues have increased. 

Energy

This graph shows that about 20% of EU gas/oil came from Russia in 2020. To maintain the European standard of living, they need Russian oil, and that's why German chancellor Scholz is continuing to keep that NordStream pipeline flowing. This week, the western leaders met at the G7 summit, and Macron told Biden that UAE is at their production capacity and that the Saudis can only produce 150k barrels/day. Macron has been on the block a long time and has stepped into Merkel's role since she retired. I don't think he's stupid enough to not realize that every directional mic in the resort would be pointed at him. I think he purposefully said this to put pressure on Biden and the US. Europe is feeling the loss of Russian oil/gas now, but their need is going to skyrocket in the winter when people need to heat their homes. The International Energy Agency has stated that the EU is at risk for energy rationing if this conflict continues through winter. 

I have been reading a lot of Michael Shellenberger lately, and he's asking a lot of very good questions. The first of which is "Why did the EU allow itself to become so dependent on an authoritarian country since the Cold War ended?" His answer, and one I agree with, is because their green energy push excluded the use of nuclear and natural gas in an effort to avoid planetary catastrophe. This year, Germany shut down 3 of 6 nuclear plants and the last three are tentatively planned to be shuttered at the end of the year. Here's a fun article from BEFORE the war, critical of the shutdown of nuclear plants and warning of the possibility of energy blackouts in the winter. On the natgas end of things, transitioning from coal to natural gas resulted in a larger CO2 emissions reduction than new wind and solar sources combined. Unfortunately, the ironically myopic goals of the climate warriors prevailed, and these technologies were shunned for EU and Africa. Russia, on the other hand, continued to utilize coal, natgas, and nuclear to a point where they are energy independent and confident enough to go and annex Ukraine. 

With this energy crisis looming, and now new pressure from the EU to produce more gas and oil, what has the US been doing? Biden has not only refused to increase production, but he cancelled a million-acre Alaskan oil lease in May. Biden is ordering a gas tax holiday, which Obama now famously opposed for essentially being useless. You know it's bad when you can find that headline on CNN and FoxNews. And this month, our Energy Secretary went on CNN and in the same sentence argued that the oil majors need to produce now and refusing to commit to continued production at that level 5-10 years from now. No oil company is going to make that investment if it's going to just get shuttered in 5 years.

So, what's happening today? Here is a link to the G7 leaders' communique, released hours ago, describing what their goals are. The first bullet point in the article is "Climate and Energy," the first paragraph of which is committed to the Paris Climate Accord. When they finally start talking about how they are going to reconcile this with current world events, 3 pages later, their suggestion is to put a price cap on Russian oil and an open call for other countries to join them. Why would the Russians ever agree to that when they can continue to sell to India and China? Why would it work any differently than the current sanctions? Why would India and China and the other 33 countries that didn't condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine agree to it? If they did agree to it, what steps would be taken to prevent them from cheating? You could introduce secondary sanctions to those who don't agree, but then that brings Trump's trade war right back to where it was. Won't this piss off OPEC if you undercut them?

The Russian people can do without Western commodities, and the Europeans cannot get by without Russian commodities - at least not at their current standards of living. 

 

[MLD Woody]

8 hours ago, VaporTrail said:

Two months out of my last post, let's see where things stand now. 

Economics - NATOsphere has maintained sanctions on Russia. However, they appear to have overestimated the effect it would have on the Russian economy and underestimated the effect it would have on their own. The commodities that the West is refusing to buy from Russia is now being sold to the renewed BRICS coalition and it's keeping the Russian economy afloat. In my opinion, the decision to enact these sanctions is as big of a blunder as Russia assuming that the Ukrainians would welcome their military with open arms. 

Keep in mind these are Russian sourced data, but they are running a bigger surplus than they did pre-war (because they're cut off from a lot of their spending on western goods). Oil industry brokers are on record as saying these sanctions haven't worked and Russian revenues have increased. 

Energy

This graph shows that about 20% of EU gas/oil came from Russia in 2020. To maintain the European standard of living, they need Russian oil, and that's why German chancellor Scholz is continuing to keep that NordStream pipeline flowing. This week, the western leaders met at the G7 summit, and Macron told Biden that UAE is at their production capacity and that the Saudis can only produce 150k barrels/day. Macron has been on the block a long time and has stepped into Merkel's role since she retired. I don't think he's stupid enough to not realize that every directional mic in the resort would be pointed at him. I think he purposefully said this to put pressure on Biden and the US. Europe is feeling the loss of Russian oil/gas now, but their need is going to skyrocket in the winter when people need to heat their homes. The International Energy Agency has stated that the EU is at risk for energy rationing if this conflict continues through winter. 

I have been reading a lot of Michael Shellenberger lately, and he's asking a lot of very good questions. The first of which is "Why did the EU allow itself to become so dependent on an authoritarian country since the Cold War ended?" His answer, and one I agree with, is because their green energy push excluded the use of nuclear and natural gas in an effort to avoid planetary catastrophe. This year, Germany shut down 3 of 6 nuclear plants and the last three are tentatively planned to be shuttered at the end of the year. Here's a fun article from BEFORE the war, critical of the shutdown of nuclear plants and warning of the possibility of energy blackouts in the winter. On the natgas end of things, transitioning from coal to natural gas resulted in a larger CO2 emissions reduction than new wind and solar sources combined. Unfortunately, the ironically myopic goals of the climate warriors prevailed, and these technologies were shunned for EU and Africa. Russia, on the other hand, continued to utilize coal, natgas, and nuclear to a point where they are energy independent and confident enough to go and annex Ukraine. 

With this energy crisis looming, and now new pressure from the EU to produce more gas and oil, what has the US been doing? Biden has not only refused to increase production, but he cancelled a million-acre Alaskan oil lease in May. Biden is ordering a gas tax holiday, which Obama now famously opposed for essentially being useless. You know it's bad when you can find that headline on CNN and FoxNews. And this month, our Energy Secretary went on CNN and in the same sentence argued that the oil majors need to produce now and refusing to commit to continued production at that level 5-10 years from now. No oil company is going to make that investment if it's going to just get shuttered in 5 years.

So, what's happening today? Here is a link to the G7 leaders' communique, released hours ago, describing what their goals are. The first bullet point in the article is "Climate and Energy," the first paragraph of which is committed to the Paris Climate Accord. When they finally start talking about how they are going to reconcile this with current world events, 3 pages later, their suggestion is to put a price cap on Russian oil and an open call for other countries to join them. Why would the Russians ever agree to that when they can continue to sell to India and China? Why would it work any differently than the current sanctions? Why would India and China and the other 33 countries that didn't condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine agree to it? If they did agree to it, what steps would be taken to prevent them from cheating? You could introduce secondary sanctions to those who don't agree, but then that brings Trump's trade war right back to where it was. Won't this piss off OPEC if you undercut them?

The Russian people can do without Western commodities, and the Europeans cannot get by without Russian commodities - at least not at their current standards of living. 

 

Great post again. Two questions / comments:

 

1. How big of a grain of salt do you think you should take with any days sourced from within Russia?

2. France is big in nuclear power, why would EU exclude it in it's energy plan? (I'm hugely pro nuclear power btw, started my college career as a nuclear engineer)

[VaporTrail]

14 minutes ago, MLD Woody said:

Great post again. Two questions / comments:

 

1. How big of a grain of salt do you think you should take with any days sourced from within Russia?

2. France is big in nuclear power, why would EU exclude it in it's energy plan? (I'm hugely pro nuclear power btw, started my college career as a nuclear engineer)

1 - It's hard to take anything from any side at face value now because propaganda is somehow worse than it was during the 2020 election. There are now nation-states competing for a narrative to be eaten up by everyone. I encourage reading all sides and trying to figure out where it averages out. I wouldn't have posted the Bank of Russia claims if they weren't also substantiated by the IIF (a DC economics think tank), oil industry leaders, and people like Peter Zeihan. All of these other sources have their biases too, but consensus seems to be that the Russian economy is doing okay and possibly better than it was prior to the conflict. 

2 - My understanding is that each individual country can choose how aggressively they are going to pursue their climate goals. The green energy lobby in Germany is much more anti-nuclear than France. The image below is from the Bloomberg article and shows who's building and who's getting rid of em. 

[calfoxwc]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/10/overwhelming-and-terrifying-impact-of-climate-crisis-on-mental-health

‘Overwhelming and terrifying’: the rise of climate anxiety

 

[calfoxwc]

https://www.aei.org › carpe-diem › there-is-no-climate-emergency-say-500-experts-in-letter-to-the-united-nations

There Is No Climate Emergency, Say 500 Experts in Letter to the United ...

There is no "evidence" that Earth's global climate or global average temperature (a silly and meaningless statistical artifact in any case) is more ideal than any other set of conditions ...

[calfoxwc]

https://www.investors.com › politics › editorials › another-climate-alarmist-admits-real-motive-behind-warming-scare

Another Climate Alarmist Admits Real Motive Behind Warming Scare

It needs a "crisis" to take advantage of, a hobgoblin to menace the people, so that they will beg for protection from the imaginary threat. The alarmists' "better world" is one in which they rule ...

 

*********************************************************************************

   I've been saying this for years now. Now hear it from experts who admit that gw is not about earth warming, but ABOUT REDISTRIBUTION OF THE WORLD'S WEALTH.

 

From the article:

 

      "

If they were honest, the climate alarmists would admit that they are not working feverishly to hold down global temperatures -- they would acknowledge that they are instead consumed with the goal of holding down capitalism and establishing a global welfare state.

Have doubts? Then listen to the words of former United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer:

"One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole," said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.

 

So what is the goal of environmental policy?

"We redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy," said Edenhofer.

For those who want to believe that maybe Edenhofer just misspoke and doesn't really mean that, consider that a little more than five years ago he also said that "the next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world's resources will be negotiated."

Mad as they are, Edenhofer's comments are nevertheless consistent with other alarmists who have spilled the movement's dirty secret. Last year, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.'s Framework Convention on Climate Change, made a similar statement.

"This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution," she said in anticipation of last year's Paris climate summit.

"This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history."

The plan is to allow Third World countries to emit as much carbon dioxide as they wish -- because, as Edenhofer said, "in order to get rich one has to burn coal, oil or gas" -- while at the same time restricting emissions in advanced nations. This will, of course, choke economic growth in developed nations, but they deserve that fate as they "have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community," he said. The fanaticism runs so deep that one professor has even suggested that we need to plunge ourselves into a depression to fight global warming.

Perhaps Naomi Klein summed up best what the warming the fuss is all about in her book "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate."

"What if global warming isn't only a crisis?" Klein asks in a preview of a documentary inspired by her book. "What if it's the best chance we're ever going to get to build a better world?"

In her mind, the world has to "change, or be changed" because an "economic system" -- meaning free-market capitalism -- has caused environmental "wreckage."

This is how the global warming alarmist community thinks. It wants to frighten, intimidate and then assume command. It needs a "crisis" to take advantage of, a hobgoblin to menace the people, so that they will beg for protection from the imaginary threat. The alarmists' "better world" is one in which they rule a global welfare state. They've admitted this themselves."

[Westside Steve]

No doubt the military-industrial complex is (are) as happy as pigs in shit.

WSS 

[VaporTrail]

4 minutes ago, Westside Steve said:

No doubt the military-industrial complex is (are) as happy as pigs in shit.

WSS 

Military update will be my next post. Maybe tonight.

[Westside Steve]

15 minutes ago, VaporTrail said:

Military update will be my next post. Maybe tonight.

https://www.aol.com/biden-seeks-united-front-nato-073237019.html

Speaking at the NATO summit in Spain, the president pledged to increase American military operations in the region in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

[VaporTrail]

Also, if anyone is interested. Here is a talk from Michael Shellenberger discussing the downsides of the push for solar and wind energy. 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=N-yALPEpV4w

I'd also highly recommend Peter Zeihan's book The Absent Superpower, too. These guys are both advocates for green energy, but unlike most discussions on the topic, they're taking into account both the benefits and drawbacks of it. 

[Canton Dawg]

I’m part of a Venture Capital group that has invested the 2nd generation of nuclear energy.

The great thing about 2nd gen (fusion energy) is there’s no nuclear waste produced.

France is ahead of the curve with this technology.

[MLD Woody]

44 minutes ago, calfoxwc said:

https://www.aei.org › carpe-diem › there-is-no-climate-emergency-say-500-experts-in-letter-to-the-united-nations

There Is No Climate Emergency, Say 500 Experts in Letter to the United ...

There is no "evidence" that Earth's global climate or global average temperature (a silly and meaningless statistical artifact in any case) is more ideal than any other set of conditions ...

- three years old

- conservative group

- funded by the oil industry

- 500 worldwide is a laughably small number

- I'd be qualified to add my name to that list

[MLD Woody]

14 minutes ago, VaporTrail said:

Also, if anyone is interested. Here is a talk from Michael Shellenberger discussing the downsides of the push for solar and wind energy. 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=N-yALPEpV4w

I'd also highly recommend Peter Zeihan's book The Absent Superpower, too. These guys are both advocates for green energy, but unlike most discussions on the topic, they're taking into account both the benefits and drawbacks of it. 

I'll definitely give it a watch 

 

I wish we would adapt nuclear more broadly. It'll be hard to do given low scientific literacy in the voting public. Plus normal NIMBY stuff.